The purpose of the subject apparatus is to create open-air shows presented at night, such as sound and light shows, without having to have a substantial screen, the use of which would in any case be incompatible with the environment in which this type of show is generally presented.
Apparatus for projecting water to form a reflective screen is known and comprises side-by-side, aligned disposition of jets of water that are obtained, for instance, from a distributor in which the water, under pressure and spurting through output nozzles, is placed; the nozzles communicate with the interior of the distributor and correspond in number to the number of water jets to be produced, which depends on the desired width of the screen. Clearly, the larger the width of the screen, the greater the loss of head, because the number of spray nozzles is multiplied, and the height of the screen is consequently proportionately lessened, unless the pressure is commensurately increased by using more powerful equipment, which necessarily increases the cost of the apparatus.
However, there is yet another disadvantage, which relates to the quality of the water screen. A screen thus obtained in fact lacks surface regularity, because it is created from a plurality of sources that drive juxtaposed jets having more or less the cross section of secants of a circle. Of course one could conceive of solving this problem by providing nozzles with specially shaped tips to create angular, flate streams of water, but the overlapping of these streams would make for irregularity in the thickness and density of the screen of water thus produced.
In fact, the major problems encountered in known apparatus have to do with the instability of the water, especially as it falls. Since it is not being moved by any specific force, it is vulnerable to any outside force, particularly the force of wind. Variations in thickness of the screen and absence of uniformity and rigidity of the masses of moving water thus lead to poor definition of images projected onto the screen, resulting in blurred contours, a lack of detail, and jumbled lines, requiring variable focusing of the lens of the image projection equipment.